The construction metaphor is full of great wisdom to be gleaned as software developers. And I'm not just saying that in hopes I didn't waste all those hours watching History Channel documentaries. :-D
Engineering isn't really a place for more than very limited creativity. That place is R&D.
For me a well designed house is actually, you know, about the design. And whilst the construction is important due to standards it is largely irrelevant.
The analogy to software is apt. Well designed, well architected software is so important. Anyone can write syntactically proper code. Far harder to design a system that has just the right amount of extensibility, performance, elegance etc to meet the requirements without going over the top.